Hm, I’m not on the list. I dont know whether I’m supposed to feel flattered, or horrible. Because, you know, when pants says x, it’s definitely ~x, because… oh just look at his posts, I’m pretty sure this observation can be backed up by Zermelo – Fraenkel theory or sth.

Because they’re unwilling to DIE for that freedom. The price of freedom has always been death.

Hm, have you ever read anything by Robert Heinlein? Because this statement seems quite familiar.

And if you haven’t then I definitely recommend doing so. He’s great at incorporating political thesis into SF stories in a seamless way, and also a great SF writer in general. Easily beats the Log in to see images!(view post)

Well, I’ll try to paraphrase myself: the impression of the next generation being less civilised that the current one is present at every point in history. Myself, I believe there is no regress, and the impression comes from getting more socially aware as people get mature, and finding the world to be “going too fast” when they become elderly. If every generation was actually significantly worse, we would annihilate ourselves centuries ago. I still don’t see how would that translate to, “war as a mean of population control”.

And about the guilt thing, I was being a bit ironic, sorry. Seriously, I know what “dying from guilt” means Log in to see images!

And sorry for that, yep, I arranged my post so that you wouldn’t be sure until the latter part if I’m from the US or not. I’m from Poland.

No problem, I was actually plannig to ask you the same anyway. Have fun at the party.

Well as we ALL know the American Diplomacy gets off on squeezing money from the poor and offering sub-par treatments and PHENOMENALLY high prices. HMO, PPO, Blue Cross-Blue Shield… its all bull****. Under a Communist government paid system there would be no worries about funding from the people.

To me, those are just a bunch of 3-letter acronyms. But in case you were wondering, the health care here also excells at squeezing money, and offering barely any treatment at all. Being government-run and all. And it’s doing it’s best to hinder private health care systems, which are offering more while charging moreorless the same.

Thats Stalin you’re thinking of. He was the master of propaganda and unfortunately McCarthy made people like “you” believe that is all that Communism was/is about.

Ah, luckily I have only a vague idea who McCarthy was. I base my opinions on the fact that I live in country that struggled with communism for about 50 years. So, sorry about that, but I’ve seen it. I’ve read book that are elaborate metaphors, just to bypbum censorship. I’ve seen pictures and movies which were locked for years, as they didn’t support the party’s point of view. I know of people who were hunted down and murdered after WWII, as they were opposing the Soviet with the same determination they opposed the Nazis. I’ve seen posters teching people to contempt free traders, and glorifying physical workers (this can be answer to your doctor & garbageman argument, personally I rescpect people who work hard and with pbumion, no matter what their job is, I don’t know how you want from salaries to respect).

HAHAHA!~ That last line leads me to believe that you would support war as a means of population control.

I beg your pardon, but how You managed to come up with such conclusion escapes me.

And just for the record Lenin’s guilt practically killed him.

Sorry for beingc picky here, but I thought it was syphilis. Which, on a sidenote, leads to question what actually lies in the Lenin’s mausoleum, as it’s way to good looking for a syphilis victim.

//OK, I’ve looked it up and it seems that the syphilis is only one of theories.

Obviously it goes much further than that and the reality is a society based on Communism works under a prolific belief in their government and in their country as a whole, something America has not had since the death of Kennedy.

Hm, why exactly that time? I’m just asking for reasoning behind choosing that particular date, I don’t know history of the US that well and though it seems obvious to me that it’s no longer as it once was, I couldn’t point a single even since which thing started to screw over.

Now democracy is so flawed that scam and con artists end up living well established lives for doing absolutely nothing or by getting by on the hard work of others. Tell me HOW IS THAT FAIR?

Be careful where you’re going with that. I can imagine people who do nothing because of ther parent’s hard work. How would you respond to that? How would communism cope with succession? Also, what would make it scam-proof?

Communism re-establishes hope in a uniformed government that ACTUALLY cares about it citizens and HELPS them to achieve greater glory for their country, their family, and for themselves.

probably Reagan Posted:

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’

I’m fine by myself, and I don’t need government’s help. When I’ll need it, I’ll ask for it. I want to have choice.

(...)Seriously. How you came up with that thought… I really don’t want to know.

* In fact, the whole idea of owning property is dicouraged in communism. Everything’s supposed to be owned by “the collective” which quickly translated to “no one”. And people are treating it appriopriately. Thus, the whole agriculture, for example, is of ****ty quality because no one cares about how the crops will grow. As thay belong to no one, it’s no one’s problem.

* The graph of any hnatural ability in society will always resemble a Gauss bell curve. This means that people with above average abilities will always be a minority. Since communism promotes being avarage and punishes excelling in anything, it’s in their vital interest to be, coloquially speaking, to be as ****ing uninvolved in any communistic society as possible. And because since whe whole system works only if everyone’s supporting it, the government will do anything to keep them within the system. Which inevitably leads us to genocide. Yes, inevitably. The hasn’t been a single country in this world where communism worked. QED, I guess.

In a nutshell:

-I want to have the right to own property that is mine, and only mine, if I choose to.

-I want to have the right to be independent from any regular member of the society, and to have nobody be dependent on me, if I choose to.

-I want to have the right to get paid proportionally to the amount of work I do

-I want to think, speak, read and listen to whatever I want.

-I want to be able to do things that can be potentially dangerous to me, as long as I’m aware of the consequences. I don’t want the government to ben them because of ill-concieved care.

And the communism aims to take all, or almost all of these rights from me. How could I be NOT opposed to it, if it diminishes Freedom?

Communism gets a horrible rep because of Stalin.. who did everything against the laws and ideals set by his predecessor Lenin. Stalin killed more people than Nazi Germany and unfortunately they were mostly his own.

Lenin killed about a hundred thousand but he only killed religious leaders and such. (something I as an atheist at least understand, though it isn’t very “human” to do such)

I’d like You to be more specific on the “understand” part, because right now I’m getting a very unsettling feeling that you don’t mind killing hundreds of thousands of people if they happen to not support your point of view.

The point is even Lenin who is considered one of the greatest Communist leaders in history (Deng Xiaoping is up there as well) had many failures among his morality and could not lead his people with a pure heart.

As much as I love the idea of a true communism or even to a lesser extent anarchy (I still feel leaders need to exist), the problem is that as humanity rolls on less and less people of pure and of “strong virtue” seem to exist.

My advice: get off the internet. Seriously, no wonder you’re getting bitter thoughts about humanity if you’re reading flamewars. Also, the idea of degradation of society is probably as old as any society. The very fact that humans are still out there proves that it’s not that bad.

But that’s a sidenote. My real point is, I’m starting to get very tired of that “I Log in to see images! communism, but I understand that it’s good only in theory” crap. It’s not even good in theory. People are not ants. The happiness of an individual is not achieved through happiness of the group he/she belongs to, or at least not primarily through it. The whole concept is wrong on so many levels, I don’t know where to begin. Maybe I’ll try to make a list:

* Since the goods are supposed to be distributed equally, you can’t get any reward for working harder. Also anyone who slacks off still gets as much as anyone else. The result? People stop trying to do their best, and instead try to work as little as possible. The ethos or work, which You mentioned later in your post, is destroyed.

* But there’s more to it: You forget that people have different needs. Since EVERY good is supposed to be distributed equally, there is no logical solution to how should, for example, books be distributd if only 50% of people want to have some. Continued…

we have a winner. my family is from the isle of lesvos (sometimes spelled lesbos, always pronounced lesvos. idiotic english people didn’t know that beta makes a v sound, not a b sound). the word lesbian has its origins there because of sappho who wrote love poetry about her female students.

you may now return to your regularly scheduled girl-on-girl action.

zOMG, that reminds my of a horrible Polish teacher from my school who, as far as I know, just couldn’t stop speaking about Sappho. So the people nicknamed her so. Luckily, she was there only for a year, and that was a year before I went to that school. But still, I’ve heard many stories depicting her as a terrible teacher.